1984#1

180x70cm

photo: Prudence Cuming Associates

This is an intense painting with a great depth of impasto towards the end of the book and the work. Perhaps more than any other, this becomes more sculptural than painterly and there are great canyons within the surface of the paint in which it is possible to see the strata of the many layers that emerge from dystopia.

1984#1, detail (in progress)

1984#2

180x70cm

photo: Prudence Cuming Associates

This is a companion piece to 1984#1 and the colours are organised on a different principle - rather than the total number of colours dictating the placement of each layer, the organising principle here is the position of the colour within the physical context of the book. In a sense this is amore faithful 'map' of the text.

photo: Prudence Cuming Associates

1984#2, detail

1984#3

180x70cm

This simpler (and far quicker) rendition of 1984 is a non-impasto version of #1. It can easily be scanned by eye from left to right to give a sense of teh unfolding of the text and Winston Smith's journey through awakening, rebellion, love in the spring bluebells, the symbolic song Oranges and Lemons through to the black and white imposition and capitulation to Big Brother and Totalitarianism.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

120x40cm

This horizontal composition is organised along the same principles as 1984#2. The colours appear on the canvas in a position analagous to the page and line they appear in the book, if one imagines the surface of the canvas as representative of the structure of the novel. Orwell was not keen on this book but it is one of my favourites.